National Theatre Posters: A Graphic Design History from 1963 to 2017

Interesting exhibition at the National Theatre looking at how the theatre has used posters and graphic design to advertise the plays and build a brand.

This was a colourful show and well described as it went through the five artists who have designed over 1700 posters in this 54 year period. It also talked about the fonts which they used the evolution of the theatre’s logo. It talked about how you have to be able to read the picture on a poster from across a street.

Striking examples included a wonderful red poster for Maggie Smith’s “Hedda Gabler” her head taking up most of the space, a classy poster in blue, black and white with gold lettering for “The Wild Duck” and from more recent times the striking poster for “The Silver Tassie”.

There was also an interesting display on creating the image for the recent “A Taste of Honey” which used a collage of images to build a convincing scene and another on how graphic design can be used in all aspects of a production using “Wonder.Land” as an example.

Closes on 31 March 2018

 

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